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He creates a work of art with his fingers

BANGALORE: Who said you need a brush to paint on canvas? Meet A. Ramakrishna, who has mastered the art of painting with his fingertips.

You may take a look at his paintings at the ongoing exhibition of his oil-on-canvas artworks at Venkatappa Art Gallery, which comes to end on Wednesday. It started on May 12. It is not for fun that he paints with fingers thumb and forefinger usually but all fingers when required. That way he gets a better "feel" of his paintings as he works on them. "It makes me very happy," he says. Another advantage is better colour combination and expression of mood. In the last few years, he has done over 200 paintings with his fingers. He says he can paint faster with his fingers. He can do a painting in 15 to 20 minutes. It takes him two hours with a brush. Why so? To bring out the effect, he needs several layers of paintings when using a brush. Between layers he will have to wait for the paint to dry. But when he does it with his fingers, he finishes it all in one go from top to bottom.